SkinnyPop co-founder cooking up $10.6 million house in Lincoln Park

Construction work is in progress on the site that held three homes purchased by the couple. They bought the fourth, seen at right, in September.

The co-founder of popcorn firm SkinnyPop is plowing some of her newfound fortune into a $10.6 million home she's building in Lincoln Park.

Pam Netzky, who with a partner sold a majority stake in Skokie-based SkinnyPop last year for $320 million, and her wife, Ashley, have paid $5.95 million for four houses on Dayton Street since September 2014 through a land trust. The couple is building a mansion in their place at a cost of $4.6 million, according to construction permits filed with the city.

Ashley Hemphill Netzky, a research manager at investment firm William Blair, said the couple would not comment on the property.

Mega-mansions that take up multiple lots have been going up south of Armitage Avenue, especially on Burling, Orchard and Howe streets, since the early 1990s, when art collectors Lew and Susan Manilow built a then unheard-of 10,000-square-footer on Howe. The Netzkys' project is among only a few to take the Lincoln Park mega-house trend north of Armitage.

North of Armitage, there have been only a few, in part because many homes were built there on single lots in the 1980s and 1990s. They're less likely to be torn down because they aren't as out-of-date as the mostly vintage homes being replaced to the south.

The Netzkys now live north of Armitage in a home built on a single 25-by-125-foot in 2013 about five blocks west of their Dayton Street building site. They bought that six-bedroom house for a little more than $3 million in May 2013, according to the Cook County Recorder of Deeds.

At the Dayton Street site three houses, all purchased last year for a combined $4 million, were demolished this fall. The fourth, purchased in late September for $1.95 million according to the recorder, is still standing.

The new house will be three stories tall with a six-car garage, according to an online permit that did not disclose the square footage. It's being built by LG Development Group. LG Partner Brian Golderg declined to comment.

By early 2012, Skokie-based SkinnyPop was in 4,500 retail stores. That number swelled to 25,000 by August 2014, when Netzky and Friedman sold their majority stake to Boston's TA Associates. SkinnyPop's parent company went public in August.